Flagship

Israel isolated but critics lack power

Israel found itself increasingly isolated as countries lined up to condemn it at the UN General Assembly. The rhetoric was “intense,” Politico reported: Brazil’s president called Israel’s actions in Gaza “collective punishment,” Colombia’s leader called it a genocide, and Turkey’s even compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler. Netanyahu has so far resisted international pressure to stop his country’s assaults on Gaza and Lebanon. US support for Israel limits the UN’s power to act and while countries are vocal about their opposition, few are willing to take any concrete action, The Wall Street Journal reported. By contrast at home Israel’s aggressive operations against Hezbollah have seen Netanyahu’s poll ratings improve.

Zelenskyy calls on Biden to move fast

Russia must be “forced into peace,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the UN. He touted a “victory plan” to end the nearly three-year-old war which he told The New Yorker was “designed, first and foremost, with [US President Joe] Biden’s support in mind,” since Biden’s possible successor Donald Trump is far less pro-Ukraine: On Monday Trump mocked Zelenskyy as “the greatest salesman in history” because “every time he comes into this country, he walks away with $60 billion.” Trump also praised Russia’s military record, saying, “They beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon,” reiterating that he would end the war quickly if elected, though he did not offer details of how.

Sahel turns to Russia

Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso agreed deals to buy telecommunications and surveillance equipment from Russia, which has made inroads across the Sahel as the region has turned away from its former allies in the West. The three military junta-led countries have grown closer to Russian militias, which offer a “regime survival package” that props up authoritarian governments in exchange for economic concessions, including access to critical minerals. However, the alliances haven’t stopped West Africa from becoming the world’s terrorism hotspot: The trio are grappling with Islamist insurgencies that have killed thousands of people and devastated their economies.

Europe turns from migration

Governments across Europe have rolled out a number of policies aimed at slowing immigration, despite their increased reliance on foreign workers to fill a shortage in the labor market. This month, for example, Germany reintroduced checks on migrants entering from within the European Union — which allows free movement of people — in response to rising domestic concern over porous borders. Meanwhile a recent poll showed immigration is now the biggest concern for Spanish voters. However, Europe is aging quickly, leading to a labor shortfall and fears of pensions becoming unsustainable. “The choice is not so much between more immigration and less immigration, but rather a lot of immigration now or a lot later,” the economist Tyler Cowen wrote earlier this year.

Women start to out-earn men

After decades of outperforming men in education, women are starting to pull ahead in the labor market as well. Across the rich world, female students have outnumbered male ones in universities for some years, the Financial Times’ chief data reporter noted, but that had not translated into the workplace. Now, though, in the UK, young women are more likely to be employed than young men, and have higher average salaries. The US has seen similar changes, although the crossover has not yet happened. If the shift was simply down to women gaining ground, “it would be something to celebrate,” but the proportion of young men “neither in education, in work nor looking for a job has been climbing steadily.”

Hong Kong plans liquor tax cut

Hong Kong is expected to cut taxes on alcohol in an attempt to revive its flagging tourism industry. The city has a 100% duty on strong liquor, among the world’s highest, and its reputation as a nightlife and dining destination is under threat as bar sales have fallen after years of political unrest and COVID-era restrictions. Hong Kong also faces competition from other big east Asian cities, notably in Japan, where the weak yen is attracting visitors, Bloomberg reported, while mainland China’s economic slowdown is reducing domestic tourism. Hong Kong removed non-spirits duties in 2008, and has since seen significant growth in the wine trade: It hopes the planned move could similarly make it a hub for spirits.

China’s tech self-sufficiency laptop

Huawei’s latest laptop contains a locally made processor and operating system, demonstrating China’s growing tech self-sufficiency. The Qingyun L540 is an exemplar of Beijing’s campaign to build a domestic tech supply chain, which has been planned for decades but spurred on by growing Western restrictions on access to high-tech goods. Chinese state organizations have been told to step up their use of homemade hardware, and the L540 is being “snapped up by governments and state groups,” the Financial Times reported. Before the directive was issued in March, the public sector exclusively used laptops running on Intel and AMD chips: Now, three-quarters of new devices are made by Chinese companies, and the L540 accounts for a majority of them.

Milei’s rare win

The price of rental properties in Buenos Aires fell 40% in a year after the country scrapped rent controls. The policy — one of several economic liberalization laws President Javier Milei has implemented since taking office last year — also led to the rental supply rising by 170%. Although a clear victory for Milei, other policies that are part of his “economic shock therapy” have hurt living conditions for many, leading to his popularity dropping by a third since the start of 2024. He had, however, warned that the economy would have to worsen before improving. Milei’s “libertarian experiment is surviving — for now,” an expert wrote in UnHerd.

‘Publish or perish’ hurting science

The pressure on scientists to publish lots of studies is driving a wave of fraud, poor research, and retractions, an academic argued. Universities use publication rates as a measure of scientists’ productivity, leading to a mentality of “publish or perish”: Those with fewer research papers are less likely to progress. That incentivizes scientists to plagiarize, manipulate data, or even in some cases use “paper mills,” businesses that publish fake papers in fake journals. The number of submissions retracted annually grows about 23% a year, Nham Tran wrote in The Conversation: Partly that is because science is getting better at spotting fakes, but partly it’s because scientists feel ever more pressured to make them.

Ancient battlefield reveals regional war

“Europe’s oldest battlefield” may have seen warring groups from hundreds of miles apart. Tollense Valley in northeast Germany was the scene of a battle around 1,250 BC, which involved up to 2,000 people — a huge number for that period. Archaeologists studied the bronze and flint arrowheads found at the scene and realized that while most were of local design, many were of a type usually used by tribes from what is now southern Germany, 500 miles away. The discovery suggests that southern warriors, or even a southern army, were involved, hinting at a regional conflict between what could have been early kingdoms, and suggesting that the professionalization of war began earlier than previously believed.

• French President Emmanuel Macron visits Canada for talks with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Ukraine and tackling disinformation are on the agenda.
• US President Joe Biden will meet Vietnam’s President To Lam on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
• Divorce, a new Polish comedy-drama, is released on Netflix.

The forest cover that the Amazon rainforest lost since 1985: 340,000 square miles, an area roughly equivalent to Germany and France combined. According to a recent report, the Amazon has lost more than 12% of its tree cover in the past four decades, largely due to illegal logging and forest clearing for cattle grazing and agriculture. It is also experiencing a historic drought, which has led to wildfires causing the release of record amounts of CO2.

Strange Darling. Empire magazine calls it a “low-budget thriller that emerges out of nowhere to bowl you over.” The movie, with its largely unknown cast and enigmatic title, was “on few radars until recently,” Nick De Semlyen said, but it is “a smart, slippery creation [that] lands its blows with a wallop.” Stephen King also praised it, calling it “a clever masterpiece.” Watch the trailer on YouTube.

• ‘A f— you endorsement’: How Trump won over a key Muslim mayor in Michigan.
• US ‘needs to get comfortable’ with exporting AI chips: Microsoft’s Brad Smith.
• Wall Street jockeys for jobs as election nears.